Our culture has a changed and many of those changes are disheartening. This past holiday season, my family and I stumbled upon an event at the Los Angeles Zoo aptly named the L.A. Zoo Lights, where the entire zoo is decked out with lights of all different assortments. As we attempted to admire what was right in front us, we realized that everyone around us was busy trying to get the perfect selfie, completely absorbed in their phones. A young boy who did not want to take a picture along a light wall was coerced by his parents to finally take the photo and once the photo was taken, they simply walked away with their faces buried in their phones, leaving the little boy behind. We spent the night dodging people that were not paying attention to their surroundings and left the zoo that night with a little less faith in humanity. “Ingrid Goes West” touches upon this in an integral way.

There’s no denying our culture is screen-obsessed. It worries me on daily basis, because my four-year-old is constantly asking for her mother’s phone, or her Fire tablet, or for the television in her room to be turned on. We try to implement a screen-time limit, but in this electronic obsessed age, it’s difficult. I, myself, am typing this review on a laptop, which I use at work. I post pictures of my girls, mostly so my family, which lives all around the U.S., can see them without me having to send the pictures individually to everyone. But I still always wonder how much is too much? Director Matt Spicer takes a look at this social commentary in a dark comedic way. Aubrey Plaza, who is also a producer on the film, plays Ingrid Thorburn, a young woman who is most definitely screen obsessed, liking pictures on Instragram without actually even absorbing what is in the picture. The first time we meet Ingrid, she is scrolling through her “friend” Charlotte’s Instragram account, who just got married that day and did not invite her, to which she responds by crashing the party and spraying mace into her eyes.

After Ingrid has a stint in a psych ward, we come to find out that Ingrid in fact was not friends with Charlotte and their only connection was that Ingrid followed her on Instagram and Charlotte replied to a post of hers once. We find this out from a catty looking woman not trying to hide the fact that she’s eyeballing Ingrid and having a conversation about her that she can obviously hear while standing in line at a grocery store. This film is filled with some of the worst people.
We see Ingrid’s obsessive nature begin to play out again, as she forms an obsession with Instagram star Taylor Sloane, played by the lovely Elizabeth Olsen. Ingrid uses her inheritance from her recently deceased mother to move out to Los Angeles, where Taylor is, and uses Taylor’s step-by-step Instagram posts across town to follow her. Moving into Taylor’s neighborhood, Ingrid ends up renting a guest house from a Batman obsessed screenwriter, Dan Pinto, played by the scene stealer of the film, O’Shea Jackson Jr, who recently portrayed his father Ice Cube in “Straight Outta Compton.” With the characters of Ingrid and Taylor bordering on almost caricature-like personalities , Dan is a breath of fresh air in being so down-to-earth and relatable, not to mention likable, that he ends up stealing every scene he’s in. His reactions and retorts to Ingrid are so believable and authentic, he feels like the tether, bringing this film back down to Earth.

From there, Ingrid bides her time in trying to wedge herself into Taylor’s life, eventually finding out where she lives and stealing her dog so that she can return her in person. Refusing to take the reward money, she accepts an offer from Taylor’s husband, Ezra, played by Wyatt Russell (man-bun included) to join them for dinner. Taylor latches on to Ingrid’s admiration for her immediately and when Ingrid is there to offer her help whenever she needs it, Taylor completely takes advantage.

There’s a particular scene where Taylor’s entitlement truly strikes me, as she forces a kind mechanic to literally lay down in the dirt, after just fixing their truck, in order to get the optimal photo of she and Ingrid standing in front of a sign. Her complete disregard for this person is something I witness on a daily basis in Los Angeles and it’s sad.

When Taylor’s brother, Nicky, (Billy Magnussen) a recovering drug addict, deliberately steps in between Ingrid (whom he calls Olga just to mess with her) and his sister Taylor, the film delves into some “Single White Female” territory, involving blackmail and kidnapping. But the film always steers the side of comedy, never truly going dark.

“Ingrid Goes West” is essentially a horror film, depicting the horrible state that our society and the new generations have devolved into. You cringe at all the mistakes that Ingrid makes in her attempts to be apart of the “cool” crowd just as you cringe at the self-indulgent nature of Taylor and her brother, who feel like their stories and their lives are basically scripture.

Personally, I feel stuck in a state of being an outsider, not just having started in a small Midwest town to now living in one of the biggest cities in the world and, ultimately, having different values than most of the people surrounding me, but also being just old enough to have seen the world that existed before internet was a household, not to mention a handheld, thing. Now I’m left to wonder why people make the choices that they make. Why does it seem like all the wrong people are famous for all the wrong reasons? Should we really give a crap what a famous family is doing on a daily basis? Should our President be allowed to tweet the garbage that he posts on Twitter?

Ingrid self-admittedly never got the help she really needed after her mother died, so she latches on to social media in such an unhealthy way and no one is there to guide her in the right direction. The same could probably be said for Taylor as well, who is described by Ezra as having been basically a boring nobody when she first moved there. He dives into Taylor’s psyche in that everything she sees is “the best” and how that phrase completely loses its meaning with her. Taylor, just like Ingrid, is lying about who she really is, and is hiding behind some emotional wall, telling people that her favorite books are actually books she hasn’t even read. By now, everyone has to realize that what is posted on Instagram is only part of a person’s life. Usually the good bits. “Ingrid Goes West” shines a light on that idea in a very poignant and comedic way, truly being a pivot film in the current age that we live in, to the point where we’ll look back at this film as a marker for representing an entire generation that we lived through. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to put down this screen and go enjoy an electronic free evening walk with my family.